Yes, this is the key. I don't think she was making a point and even at the end it seems another girl also didn't get a medal because the judge ran out, so probably not intentional. BUT, the effect is so much more damaging because these kinds of things ARE sometimes meant as signals and so it should have been dealt with directly. If she had immediately acknowledged that it could be felt that way and said "racism has no place in gymnastics", you still wouldn't know if she was lying but at least racists could not take comfort from the organization's tacit acceptance of how racist it looked.